Companies that are successful in the rapidly changing worldwide economy are those who stay focused on what makes a difference for them. For some years, business and technology pundits have spent an effort discussing “core competencies” and the necessity of organizations staying focused on them. It is often more difficult than it should be, though. Some companies do an exceptionally good job, though.One of my clients is Firefly Energy, an energy storage company focused on greening the lead-acid battery industry. They are a company with a deep set of knowledge in materials science and a willingness to break the long-unquestioned beliefs of an industry.But, they don’t do IT. Instead, they keep themselves focused on their core competencies and get managed services for the rest. Recently, I helped them find a way to do this during a move of some of their staff to a new facility. Instead of the typical approach of buying new equipment and spending time and energy bringing internal staff up to speed, we hired managed services companies to do the work. A combination of a local IT services company called NetPlatform and a specialty IT services company called q!bang Solutions allowed us to get more done with less.The new facility will have a managed telephony system using an open source approach (SIPfoundry’s sipX). q!bang configured the system, shipped it to the new facility, configured it after it was installed, and will manage it remotely for a very affordable monthly fee.Similarly, NetPlatform is developing an approach that will allow Firefly to have a monthly controlled-cost managed service for all of their IT requirements based on the number of staff they have. If a fast-moving, innovative company like Firefly can thrive without any internal IT staff, there is clearly an opportunity for each organization to focus on the core value to the business and purchasing services that aren’t critical to it. For example, in many organizations, strategic information technology is often delayed or abandoned due to day-to-day support requirements. What if you handed that routine service off to a service provider and refocused on those things that will benefit the core business by improving the top-line or bottom-line?That is the business value of IT. Careers